From the twenties to the seventies, from the Warlord era to the communist Cultural Revolution, the story of two actors and a concubine in the fifty years that changed China.

Winner of the 1993 Palme d’Or, Chen Kaige’s widescreen epic draws on the classical theater for its expansive vision. Its modern take on taboos surrounding homosexuality and gender performativity— a first in Chinese cinema—was not without controversy: a queer, epoch-spanning masterpiece for the ages.